Courtroom of the Regional Court in Olomouc – illustrative photo.
Olomouc – The Olomouc Regional Court will announce a verdict today in the case of allegedly manipulated 13 public contracts for information systems, in which 24 people and the companies Tesco SW and Eunice Consulting are accused. The court has been dealing with the case with the damage, which the plaintiff estimated at roughly a quarter of a billion crowns, since September 2021. It heard over a hundred witnesses. The plaintiff proposes multi-year prison sentences for all of them and fines in the order of millions of crowns for the defendant companies and a ban on participation in public tenders. The defendants denied guilt throughout the trial, they are requesting acquittal.
Advertisement'; }
The case concerns 13 public contracts for information systems from 2009 to 2014. According to public prosecutor Martin Brzobohatý, the defendants, by mutual agreement, influenced these contracts announced in the operational program of the Ministry of the Interior and subsidized from EU structural funds with the aim of favoring the selected business company. These were, for example, subsidies for building data networks, ensuring data transmission, their security and the electronicization of town hall services.
According to the defense attorneys, however, there is no evidence of the defendants' guilt. They defended themselves by saying that such complex contracts were consultations that were completely common at the time and were aimed at helping the client. According to the defendants, market consultations are not an illegal act, they also pointed out that the situation ten years ago was different in terms of public contracts. They described the actions of the prosecutors as the criminalization of business dealings.
The matter is related to a raid by the anti-corruption police in September 2014. It took place at several places across the country at the time, and according to the prosecutors, there were 40 searches. Police officers were, for example, at the town halls in Olomouc, Přerov and Zlín. The police action also concerned the governorships in Zlín and Olomouc. The case was resolved for several years, and the Supreme Public Prosecutor's Office intervened several times, which canceled the prosecution of some people.
